The 1965 protest anthem Paul Simon couldn’t stand: “It was ruined”
Throughout his career, Paul Simon has been lauded for being an incredible wordsmith and has always been reliable when it comes to weaving the most incredible tune to accompany his poignant lyrics.
Whether writing stories about people and their lives or places significant to him and his life, he has always managed to turn the simplest idea into pure poetry, and he’ll forever be celebrated for this.
That ability to elevate the everyday is what has consistently set Simon apart from his peers. Rather than relying on grand statements or overt declarations, he has often found more power in subtlety, allowing listeners to interpret meaning through nuance rather than being directly told what to think.
However, one thing that a lot of people who have a way with words often end up doing is utilising their words to create political change and writing songs of protest. Whether you’re looking at the likes of Joni Mitchell or Bob Dylan, they’ve always been able to write impactful songs that have attempted to shed light on socio-political themes, highlighting the ills of the world and pleading with the people in power to take action and accountability for their wrongs.
Simon did write a handful of protest songs throughout his career, but they were never too explicit in their motives. Take ‘American Tune’, for example – a song that Simon wrote shortly after the controversial election of President Richard Nixon – it’s not direct in its messaging about his thoughts on the politician, but it touches on themes. Simon reflected on this in a 2011 interview, stating, “When I write about politics, it’s usually part of a song, maybe a verse or two rather than the whole thing,” while accepting his role as more of a cultural commentator than a political one.
It’s a distinction that defines much of his catalogue. By weaving political ideas into broader human stories, Simon avoids the pitfalls of didactic songwriting, instead creating work that feels timeless rather than tied to a specific moment or movement.
He’d continue by arguing that most of his songs change subject part of the way through unless they’re telling a specific narrative, echoing the way his own internal conversations happen. However, writing a protest song is surely something that requires a narrative in order to be told, so what was Simon’s real issue with writing protest songs, and why didn’t he come up with more?
It turns out that he had some pretty strong opinions of his own on protest music, and in a 1972 interview with Rolling Stone, he was quizzed on his feelings towards the concept of protest music. “I didn’t dislike it,” he stated, caveating his feelings by beginning with a positive slant. “I liked it, like everybody liked it. I thought that second Dylan album, The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, was fantastic. It was very moving. Very exciting. There was a lot of bad protest because protest became a thing.”
What exactly did he mean by that? He would then get asked about the song ‘Eve of Destruction’, which was most famously performed by Barry McGuire in 1965, on which his opinions were considerably more blunt. “Awful,” he said. “You knew that it was already ruined when that happened.” While he may not have been referring to the song itself being awful, the amount of backlash that came as a result of the song’s anti-Vietnam War and pro-Civil Rights stance was ultimately what ruined the song and the art of protest music for Simon and rendered it more of a hindrance towards the goal of creating positive change.
Perhaps it’s because the lyrics of ‘Eve of Destruction’ are so direct in their protestation that Simon felt it was counter-productive, but ultimately, if you’re getting people to take note of the issue at hand, then it’s difficult to see how that can be a problem.
